In school, I was taught whenever coming across the pattern "either..or" or "neither..nor", we should always consider the noun/pronoun nearer to the verb when deciding which form to use.
For example:
Neither my parents nor John _______ (agree) with that.
In this case, we should use "agrees" instead of "agree" since John is closer to the verb.
Then I have a question. What if when there is only "either" or "neither"?
For example:
There are two particles: quarks and gluons. Neither ________ (detect) in the lab in isolated form yet.
In this case, should I use "has been detected" or "have been detected"?
Best Answer
There is nothing stopping you from thinking of the pronoun neither as a shorter way of saying neither one where neither is functioning as a determiner. Neither one is obviously a phrase that's singular, therefore, according to the subject-verb agreement rule, the verb that goes along with the subject must be in its singular form if the subject itself is singular. That's why has been detected would be the correct choice here: